Business.com -- Could be worth $400 million (says WSJ)

[nicholas]

This from TechCrunch:

"Business information directory and search enginame Business.com is for sale, reports the Wall Street Journal, and it may fetch as much as $400 million."

What's interesting is this bit:

The domain name was purchased for $150,000 back in 1997. Later, the purchase was widely ridiculed - in 1999 the domain was acquired for just $7.5 million.

Those were the days before CPC ads and parked pages, though, which brought the value of domains up exponentially. The risk paid off. Business.com now has EBITDA of around $15 million/year. A $400 million acquisition price is a 26 multiple on current profits, which is on the high end of current valuations.

CPC wins the day yet again.

Link here

 

[Spade]

I think thats on the very high end of value. I think this name is probably worth xx,xxx,xxx - I dont see this breaking the 100 mill mark - am I crazy? I just dont see it.

 

[Alex]

I think the purchase not refers to the domain solely, but for the entire site.

 

[nicholas]

What's interesting is because it's a site based mostly off CPC. It "looks" like a site but dig deeper, and you'll see that the listings are ads.

Just comes to show that with such a domain, you can practically do anything with it and still let it command amazing value.

 

[Spade]

I think the purchase not refers to the domain solely, but for the entire site.

Its a glorified parking page....

 

[Dotmainer]

Its a glorified parking page....

what a waste .. tssst :td:

 

[yesonline]

The domain name was purchased for $7.5 million back in 1997. Later, the purchase was widely ridiculed - in 1999 the domain was acquired for just $150,000.

I think there are some mistakes, business.com should be purchased for 150000 in 1997, and 2 years later, sold for 7.5 millions.

 

[DnPresident]

CreditCards.com

CreditCards.com is way up there like that as well, hundreds of millions.

 

[christian_1983]

seems to be a large directory. If i remember correctly it pulls down 15000 000 a year gross, no??? Anyways 400 mil seems very steep unless the user has some great plans for it in the future. It would take a long time to pay of 400 mil at 15 mil a year gross rev. You could just put that money in the bank and make tons of money doing nothing.

Cheers.

 

[nicholas]

Aye, with that amount, you'd make more money spending it elsewhere on other less costly, similarly valuable domains and sites and developing them instead